Language Magazine - March 2023

High Reliability Schools

June 21–23 | Hot Springs, Arkansas

July 10–12 | Cedar Rapids, Iowa

October 2–4 | Birmingham, Alabama

Take the next step in school improvement

The High Reliability Schools Institute gives you and your team the knowledge and tools to implement specific levels of the powerful HRS framework. Whether you are just beginning to explore HRS or are involved in deep implementation, this is a great opportunity to build knowledge, set or revisit goals, and focus your work.

Network with expert presenters who have led this work in their own schools and districts and partnered with thousands of educators to help them implement the transformational HRS process each day. The program includes interactive breakout sessions, compelling keynotes, and time for teams and individuals to reflect and seek guidance from the presenters.

� LEARN how the HRS framework organizes research-based practices that increase student achievement.

� DISCOVER how establishing a common model of instructional practice can improve teaching and learning in every classroom.

� ACQUIRE a process for establishing a guaranteed and viable curriculum districtwide to ensure all students learn.

� UNDERSTAND how to use quick data to monitor and sustain successful practices within schools.

If administrators, teachers, and staff all believe that schools should function to enhance the lives of all students, then they will make decisions about resources, programs, and policies in a manner consistent with that belief.”

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De Facto Bilingual Education

Stephen Krashen considers the contribution of “light” literature

A Model for Improving the Quality of Student Talk in Mathematics Classrooms

Jeff Zwiers talks math

Effective Use of Response Frames to Engage English Learners in Academic Interactions

Kate Kinsella provides practical guidance for educators striving to include English learners in essential lesson discussions

Why Focus on Monolingual Solutions to Improve Biliterate Reading?

Alexandra Guilamo argues that dual language programs need professional learning to implement the science of the bilingual reading brain in their classrooms

TESOL Professional Preparation Programs

Language Magazine highlights TESOL programs

Leading the Way with Young Learners

Luis João Molina reports on California’s new asset-based process to identify and improve supports for dual language learners in state preschools

Pass the Mic Series: Educating Boys and Young Men of Color, Persistence, Preservation and Preparation

Ayanna Cooper finds out why Ron Walker prioritizes the social–emotional learning of young Black men

French around the World and Right Here

Kathy Stein-Smith provides an update on the French resurgence in the US

March  2023 Vol. 22, No. 7

Improving Literacy and Communication

Publishing Editor

Daniel Ward

Assistant Editor/ Creative Director

Leanna Robinson

Pass the Mic Series Editor

Ayanna Cooper, Ed.D. Proofreading

Stephanie Mitchell Office Manager

Ashley George Book Reviews

Karen Russikoff

Last Writes

Richard Lederer

The Word

Peter Sokolowski

News Writer

Athina Kontos

Contributors

Joanna Cole

Alexandra Guilamo

Luis João Molina

Kate Kinsella

Stephen Krashen

Kathy Stein-Smith

Jeff Zwiers

Marketing

Emma Sutton

Annette Camacho

Laying Down the Law

very few years, education bubbles up to the top of the political agenda in state capitols across the US and legislatures scramble to pass bills that seek to bind the state’s education policy to the prevailing political ideology. This is to be expected—education is often top of the political agenda for many voters, and it is also one of the key policy areas where states reign supreme over the federal government. States have to decide education budgets and often define curricula, but are policymakers, let alone voters, really qualified to decide on methodology—how teachers teach?

Delaware and Illinois have recently passed media literacy education mandates that specify curriculum changes, while New Jersey and Pennsylvania are considering similar provisions. And, in Illinois, the Right to Read Act has been divided up into three bills, one of which requires the State Board of Education to create a list of evidencebased reading programs but does not yet stipulate that they have to be used. The majority of states have passed legislation in the past few years that requires reading instruction to be evidence-based. Other states have gone further—Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Colorado have all passed laws requiring “science of reading” practices to be used in elementary literacy instruction.

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Ephonics, nor is it a one-size-fits-all approach, but it is a “vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing” (Kurto, 2023). Therein lies the difficulty— attempting to frame legislation with mass appeal that can accommodate such a broad definition. Not only is it very difficult to legislate on education methodologies, it’s also dangerous. Voters and policymakers need to recognize that, despite having access to an organized body of research like the science of reading, they are not expert enough to interpret all of it, let alone to decide how it should be used in practice. Look what happened when a concerted campaign was run to outlaw bilingual education in California and socalled evidence was skewed to convince voters to pass Proposition 227. It took over ten years for the measure to be overturned, despite overwhelming research showing the inferiority of English-only instruction.

Critics of this recent spate of legislation stipulating that teachers use specific methodologies in their classroom say they limit what’s available to educators. Rachael Gabriel, a professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut, has compared bans on “cueing”—teaching readers to use context and picture clues to identify unknown words—to laws that prohibit teaching about race and sexuality in schools.

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As evidenced by the ongoing series of articles in this magazine, the science of reading is not a particular methodology, but policymakers are being selective in their interpretation of the science in order to promote the methodologies that they favor. Literacy experts have made it clear that the science of reading is not a single, specific component of instruction, such as

“It’s that same notion of saying we are going to narrow what’s possible and control the heck out of it,” she says, adding that these laws come out of “a stream of authoritarianism,” with “this distrust of expertise and of universities and of science and the sort of traditional ways that we would authorize good science.”

Buying a different curriculum does not mean that reading levels will necessarily improve. The most influential indicator of student success is still the expertise of their teachers. And we must allow our highly trained educators the space and freedom to choose the (evidence-based) methodologies that they judge will best suit their particular students.

Daniel Ward, Editor

THE KEY TO UNLOCKING POWERFUL INTERVENTIONS

March 27–29

Glendale, Arizona

April 26–28

Green Bay, Wisconsin

May 9–11

Hot Springs, Arkansas

August 7–9

Bellevue, Washington

November 13–15

Sacramento, California

December 5–7

New Orleans, Louisiana

Join us at an RTI at Work™ Institute to discover how you can build a practical, effective system of interventions that ensures all students reach their full potential.

With the guidance of nationally recognized experts who have successfully implemented RTI/MTSS in a variety of settings—often with limited personnel and resources—you will learn how to:

• Create a school or district culture that focuses on student learning

• Build a highly effective, collaborative core program

• Unpack standards into focused student learning targets

Luis F. Cruz Nicole Dimich Mike Mattos

Keynote Speaker Presenters subject to change

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SUBJECT LINE: Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor

Young Readers Struggle in Different Ways (January 2023)

What is the role of home language? Shouldn’t that be part of the consideration of reading challenges? Also, students come from diverse backgrounds and parents may also have different educational levels. Multiple languages may be spoken at home, or children may speak one language with grandparents and another with siblings. Also, the second language may not be Spanish. However, I do agree that there are multiple reasons why children struggle with reading. Sometimes it is phonological processing, but cultural unfamiliarity, lack of vocabulary that can inform RAN tests, and lack of background knowledge also inform test results. Finally, is a college degree really a good measure of SES? Many graduate students are on food stamps! In reality, short-term “interventions” to fill “gaps” may be the wrong prescription for ongoing instruction that meets students and families where they are.

Laurie Zucker-Conde, EdD, Newton, MA

The use of a student’s first language (L1) in English classes can be a helpful tool for teaching and learning. Here are some situations where it may be appropriate to use a student’s L1:

Clarification of difficult concepts: When introducing new concepts or ideas, using the student’s L1 to explain can help them understand more clearly.

Instructional scaffolding: When a student is struggling with a task, using their L1 to provide support and guidance can help them move toward understanding in English.

Classroom management: Using a student’s L1 can be useful in managing classroom behavior or addressing conflicts, particularly with students who have limited English proficiency.

Cultural understanding: Sometimes, cultural nuances and references are difficult to translate into English. In these cases, using a student’s L1 can help clarify cultural references and ensure understanding.

However, it’s important to remember that the ultimate goal of an English class is to help students develop their English language proficiency. Over-reliance on the L1 can hinder their progress toward this goal.

Mohammad Naghavi

the word S

More Sounds of Silence

ome letters are silent in English because they are part of sound combinations that are so uncommon that English speakers ultimately resist pronouncing them. Since we have words borrowed from languages that have different sound patterns, this results in English speakers pronouncing the words differently than in their languages of origin.

That’s why the m is silent in mnemonic, meaning “assisting memory” or “relating to memory,” which came to English from Greek through Latin during the 1600s, when many words of classical origin were introduced by scholarly writers. It is documented that the m was pronounced before the n in the late 1800s and has gradually dropped away. There are very few words in English that begin with mn, and most of them are rare words that share the ultimate Greek root of the word meaning “to remember,” including mneme (pronounced /NEE-mee/), mnestic, mnemotechnical, and the name of the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.

Perhaps the oddest-looking collection of consonants at the beginning of an English word is the strange chth in chthonic, pronounced /THON-ik/, which comes from the Greek word meaning “earth” or “world” and is a fancy way to say “relating to the underworld” or “infernal.” In Greek mythology, it referred to the realm of the dead, where spirits would reside in the afterlife, overseen by Hades, king of the underworld (and the underworld itself was sometimes called Hades).

English has also borrowed words from Yiddish, the source of chutzpah, a word spelled with ch that is now usually pronounced as /h/, making the c silent. Like the now-silent ch in yacht, the ch was originally pronounced as a rasping sound from the back of the throat—a sound that has vanished in modern English.

We usually don’t hear the L in words like palm and calm, and this is also a pronunciation that has changed over time. The “dark” sound of the letter L is one that can alter the sound of the vowel that comes before it as it melts into the m. This is why the vowel sounds are different in word pairs like calm and cat and talk and tack. If you want to hear the difference between a light and dark L, say the word lull. The initial /L/ is light, pronounced at the front of the mouth, while the final /L/ is dark, spoken by raising the back of the tongue slightly.

This is the same process that causes the sound of L to become a vowel sound in some Cockney accents, when a word like trouble is pronounced /TRUH-boe/, or in some pronunciations of help that don’t have a clear L sound.

It’s partly because of so many silent letters like these that English spelling gives us so much trouble.

Follow Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster, on Twitter @PeterSokolowski.

Cardona Sets Goal of Multilingualism for All Students

t last month’s National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) annual conference in Portland, Oregon, US secretary for education Miguel Cardona laid out plans to boost multilingual education across the country, including the reallocation of funds to bolster dual language programs and the training of dual language educators.

Cardona inspired the crowd of thousands of educators with his rhetoric:

“Why is it that in 2023, in many school systems in our country, we treat our English learners as students with deficits—rather than assets in a globally competitive world? It makes no sense! It defies what other multilingual countries already understand. It defies our historical reality as a nation born of immigrants.

“So today, reconozcamos que: bilingualism and biculturalism is a superpower—and we at the Department of Education will work to help our students become multilingual. Let’s put to bed, once and for all, the notion that multilingualism is just a bonus—or worse, a deficit.

“Let’s build a new era of multilingualism in America—an era where our young people can lead thriving lives and careers with their knowledge of languages from Mandarin to French, Spanish to Japanese. And let’s foster a new multilingual generation of Americans—strengthened in their identities, supported in their education, prepared to lead in our country and around the world.

“To all of our students in America: ¡Ya es tiempo de aprender otro idioma!”

The secretary of education continued by outlining some concrete funding and support for multilingual education:

“The research makes clear: the academic effects of these programs is strong, both for English learners and for native English speakers. A recent study here in Portland shows that students enrolled in a dual language program scored seven months ahead in reading in grade five and nine months ahead in reading in grade eight.

“We just secured $890 million in yearly funding under Title III that can help states support their English learners through their Language Instructional Educational Programs. That’s an increase of $93 million since the beginning of the Biden–Harris Administration. And we’ll be pushing for more funding soon—so stay tuned.

“I’m announcing today that I have proposed to reorganize the Title III program from the Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education back into the Office of English Language Acquisition. I know this will strengthen the administration, capacity, and technical assistance of the Title III formula, which you and all of our students deserve. We need to push harder to ensure federal dollars are being used for programs that work. Not only must

Awe support good programming, we need to hold states accountable for bad programming.

“Another strategy we will focus on at the US Department of Education includes making sure we have a lot more high-quality bilingual and multilingual educators—educators like you. That starts with quality training, recruiting, and retaining educators—including young people of color. I don’t have to tell you that we are at the doorstep of a teacher-shortage crisis in our country. This is even more palpable in hard-to-fill areas like bilingual education.

“That’s why, last month, we announced our first-ever grants— totaling over $18 million—under the Augustus Hawkins program to increase high-quality teacher-preparation programs for teachers of color and multilingual teachers, who are uniquely situated to reach our diverse student population. And every single one of those grantees incorporated a priority to produce more multilingual and bilingual teachers into their plans for these funds.”

Cardona’s speech, which reiterated some aspects of the department’s recently announced Raise the Bar initiative, was met with a standing ovation, and the secretary followed it up the following week by reading a Spanish-language book to students in a Spanish/English dual language program in Washington, DC, on National Read across America Day.

Bill Would Extend Pell Grant by Four Semesters

Nearly 60% of Black college students and nearly half of Native American and Latinx students receive a Pell Grant.

“For many students, completing college in the traditional twelve semesters is not a reality,” said Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan). “Expanding Pell eligibility by four semesters means that the students who need it most have another chance to complete their degrees. We also know that advanced degrees are key to filling the jobs of the future. I hear from business owners across southeast Michigan that they are eager to hire and have high-wage jobs in the advanced manufacturing sector just waiting to be filled. This bill will help students get the degrees they need to succeed and become a part of America’s next generation of workers and thinkers, ready to meet the demand of the future.”

“Pell Grants have given millions the opportunity to receive a higher education, including myself. But Pell falls short by only funding undergraduate students and giving them a strict timeline to complete their education. In today’s job market, a master’s degree is necessary to compete for many entry-level jobs, creating another barrier for low-income students and graduates,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-California). “Our legislation allows students to use Pell Grants for post-grad education and extends the coverage period from twelve to 16 semesters, enabling students to complete their education on a timeline that works for them.”

The Pell to Grad Act will (1) extend students’ lifetime Pell Grant eligibility to 16 semesters from the current twelve semesters; (2) allow students who have received a Pell Grant award during their undergraduate education to utilize their remaining Pell eligibility toward a first graduate degree. Under current law, students’ eligibility for Pell Grants is limited to twelve semesters, and students are prohibited from using Pell Grants for graduate or professional degrees.

The Federal Pell Grant Program administers grants to low-income undergraduates and select postbaccalaureate pupils. The Pell Grant was introduced through the Higher Education Act of 1965.